Military Explosive Found in Gulfport; Round Was Not Live

It was a quiet afternoon in one Gulfport neighborhood until a discovery during a traffic stop caused some panic.

Wednesday afternoon, a tight knit community on a quiet road in Gulfport was the scene of a routine traffic stop, but what the deputy spotted in the back seat made him take some extra action. Pat Sullivan, Harrison County Fire Marshal, says, "There was some type of military ordinance or round in the back seat. He became concerned about it and then he determined that it could possibly a live round."

Police and fire rescue crews wasted little time in closing off the area, taking extra precautions to make sure no one was in the blast radius. Sullivan also says, "We’ve evacuated some of the residents in the immediate area just in case this thing were to go off, they would be safe."

Anytime there is a military device involved, that’s when extra help is called in from the military. This isn’t the first time this has happened and officials have had to detonate some of these devices in the past. Sullivan closes, "Where we had ordinances that they came in took a look at it and said let’s just blow it up and make it inert."

Thankfully, an x-ray of the device performed by the Biloxi Bomb Squad revealed that it was not an explosive and the squad was able to take control of the device, allowing the quiet community to get back to normal. The area was cleared just after 7 p.m. Wednesday night and the entire ordeal took only a few hours.